Exclusive Video! How the filmmakers plan to bring The Legend of Ned Kelly to life

Hot on the heels of the worldwide release of his 2016 independently produced feature The Legend of Ben Hall, Melbourne writer-director-producer Matthew Holmes is once again saddling up for an even grander bushranger tale and the second film in his planned series titled The Legends Anthology.

The Legend of Ned Kelly will be an epic feature biopic that chronicles the life of Australia’s most infamous outlaw, portraying the character and story with a strict adherence to historical accuracy and documented research.

To raise the production finance, Matthew and his team are returning to the successful crowd-funding website Kickstarter where they will launch their funding campaign from this Wednesday 24th May at 7am. Their bid is to raise AUD$2.5 million, making it the most ambitious crowd-funded film project ever launched in Australia and with only 38 days to achieve their target by 9:00pm on 30 June.

The public, worldwide, are being encouraged to make pledges from as low as $5 and as high as $12,500 with DVDs, Blu-Rays, books, posters, memorabilia and on-set visits on offer as rewards.

Several major motion pictures have secured funding using Kickstarter, but there has never been an Australian feature that has ever attempted such a large target.

The team are confident that they can reach it given the tremendous global audience response to The Legend of Ben Hall and the world-wide infamy of their new protagonist. It’s been 15 years since Heath Ledger donned the outlaw’s steel helmet in Gregor Jordan’s Ned Kelly. “Ours is a very different film to any Ned Kelly film in the past,” says Matthew Holmes. “We are interested in finally putting the true story of Ned Kelly on the big screen and stripping away the mythology.

The true story is far more fascinating than the fictionalised adaptations.” The Legend of Ben Hall began as a Kickstarter crowd-funded film in 2014 raising over $100,000 for a short film that eventually grew into a full-length feature. This multi-award winning film has since been released in 22 countries including North America in August through Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

The Legend of Ned Kelly is co-written by Melbourne Ned Kelly enthusiasts/historians Aidan Phelan and Steve Jager and produced by Matthew’s production company Two Tone Pictures along with Fox Studios Australia based RLC Motion Picture Entertainment.